Music is shaped by our experience of time; music, by its very nature, is a temporal art form that engages with the listener’s awareness. These musical compositions alongside philosophical and musical reflections aim to expand the boundaries of how listeners engage with time and consciousness during the act of listening. Rather than curating a narrative within the music itself, this portfolio of compositions aims to provide a space for the listener’s awareness to fluctuate, allowing personal narratives to emerge organically from their engagement with the sound. This practice-led research places my compositions at the heart of the inquiry, using them as a primary means to explore how compositional techniques can facilitate a narrative formed through the listener’s fluctuating awareness. Inspired by phenomenological thought, but not bound by it, this approach seeks to engage with a deeper understanding of the listener’s role in music creation, emphasising the experimental aspect of statis, repetition, systems and minimalist approaches. My findings highlight the importance of creating compositions that engage with the listener’s temporal experience, offering spaces where streams of individual acts of consciousness can navigate freely, promoting new perspectives on how music and acts of listening shape each other.
| Date of Award | Jul 2025 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Awarding Institution | - Queen's University Belfast
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| Supervisor | Simon Mawhinney (Supervisor) & Piers Hellawell (Supervisor) |
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- phenomenology
- temporality
- composition
The narrative of awareness in the listener's fluctuating experience: a portfolio of original compositions
Geer, M. (Author). Jul 2025
Student thesis: Doctoral Thesis › Doctor of Philosophy